handwriting: The document is in Wheelock's hand, not Occom's. It is
informal, heavily slanted and occasionally difficult to decipher.

paper: Large sheet folded in half to make four pages is in good-to-fair
condition, with light staining and wear, and somewhat heavy creasing. The
letter
is on the same paper as manuscripts 756190, 756900.1 and 756520.

ink: Brown ink is heavily faded.

noteworthy: The contents of this document are very similar to those of a
letter fragment, written in Occom's hand, contained in manuscript 754900.2.

signature: The letter is signed Samson Occom, but the signature is in
Wheelock's hand.

I look upon Myſelf, of all Cretures the moſt indebted to God, who has calld me out of the Groſseſs
Paganiſm, where I was periſhing without the leaſt Glimpse of Gospel Light, and brought me into his marvellous Light. and diſ‐pos'd the hearts of one and another of his Dear Peopte to
Shew
Pitty and great Kindneſs to me. and Expreſs the Same in Numberleſs
Inſtances. among which yours by the Rev. M.r Wheelock
muſt be acknowledg'd
an
Remembred by me with the Greateſt Gratitude, In which, however unworthy I am you could have no other motive
but a Single Regard to the Advancement of the Kingdom & Glory of the Redeem⇑er may God reward You out of
his Immeſe
Treaſures of Re‐‐wards and Gifts. and however little you may
account of it thro' the greatneſs of Your Affection to Chriſt which will make you think little of the moſt you can do for him yet it was great in the Eyes of Chriſt. and I Truſt you[illegible] are Intituled
Yourſelf to the Bleſsedneſs
of him that con‐‐ſidereth the Poor. pleaſe Madam to Suffer me to beg, in addition to the Favours received, Your
continual Remembrance at the Throne of Divinge Grace, of him who is, with
the Greateſt
Reſpect

Samson Occom was a Mohegan leader and ordained
Presbyterian minister. Occom began his public career in 1742, when he
was chosen as a tribal counselor to Ben Uncas II. The following year, he
sought out Eleazar Wheelock, a young Anglo-American minister in Lebanon,
CT, in hopes of obtaining some education and becoming a teacher at
Mohegan. Wheelock agreed to take on Occom as a student, and though Occom
had anticipated staying for a few weeks or months, he remained with
Wheelock for four years. Occom’s academic success inspired Wheelock to
open Moor’s Indian Charity School in 1754, a project which gave him the
financial and political capital to establish Dartmouth College in 1769.
After his time with Wheelock, Occom embarked on a 12-year mission to the
Montauk of Long Island (1749-1761). He married a Montauk woman, Mary
Fowler, and served as both teacher and missionary to the Montauk and
nearby Shinnecock, although he was grievously underpaid for his
services. Occom conducted two brief missions to the Oneida in 1761 and
1762 before embarking on one of the defining journeys of his career: a
fundraising tour of Great Britain that lasted from 1765 to 1768. During
this journey, undertaken on behalf of Moor’s Indian Charity School,
Occom raised £12,000 (an enormous and unanticpated amount that
translates roughly to more than two-million dollars), and won wide
acclaim for his preaching and comportment. Upon his return to Mohegan in
1768, Occom discovered that Wheelock had failed to adequately care for
his family while he was gone. Additionally, despite the vast sums of
money that he had raised, Occom found himself unemployed. Wheelock tried
to find Occom a missionary position, but Occom was in poor health and
disinclined to leave his family again after seeing the treatment with
which they had met while he was in Britain. Occom and Wheelock’s
relationship continued to sour as it became apparent to Occom that the
money he had labored to raise would be going towards infrastructure at
Dartmouth College, Wheelock’s new project, rather than the education of
Native Americans. After the dissolution of his relationship with
Wheelock, Occom became increasingly focused on the needs of the Mohegan
community and increasingly vocal in criticizing Anglo-Americans’
un-Christian treatment of Native Americans. In September of 1772, he
delivered his famous “Sermon on the Execution of Moses Paul,” which took
Anglo-American spiritual hypocrisy as one of its major themes, and which
went into four printings before the end of the year. In 1773, Occom
became further disillusioned when the Mason Land Case was decided in
favor of the Colony of Connecticut. The details of the Mason Case are
complicated, but to summarize: the Colony of Connecticut had gained
control of Mohegan land early in the 18th century under very suspect
circumstances, and successfully fended off the Mohegan’s 70-year-long
legal challenge. The conclusion of the case came as a blow to the
Mohegans, and further convinced Occom of Anglo-American corruption.
Along with David Fowler (Montauk Tribe), Occom's brother-in-law, and
Joseph Johnson (Mohegan), Occom's son-in-law, Occom helped found
Brothertown, an Indian tribe formed from the Christian Mohegans,
Pequots, Narragansetts, Montauks, Tunxis, and Niantics. They eventually
settled in Oneida country in upstate New York. Occom moved there with
his family in 1789, spending the remaining years of his life serving as
a minster to the Brothertown, Stockbridge, and Mohegan Indians. Harried
by corrupt land agents, the Brothertown and Stockbridge groups relocated
to the eastern shore of Lake Winnebago, though Occom died in 1792 before
he could remove himself and his family there. Occom's writings and
legacy have made him one of the best known and most eminent Native
Americans of the 18th century and beyond.

Eleazar Wheelock was a New Light Congregationalist
minister who founded Dartmouth College. He was born into a very typical
Congregationalist family, and began studying at Yale in 1729, where he
fell in with the emerging New Light clique. The evangelical network that
he built in college propelled him to fame as an itinerant minister
during the First Great Awakening and gave him many of the contacts that
he later drew on to support his charity school for Native Americans.
Wheelock’s time as an itinerant minister indirectly brought about his
charity school. When the Colony of Connecticut retroactively punished
itinerant preaching in 1743, Wheelock was among those who lost his
salary. Thus, in 1743, he began operating a grammar school to support
himself. He was joined that December by Samson Occom, a Mohegan Indian,
who sought out an education in hopes of becoming a teacher among his
people. Occom’s academic success inspired Wheelock to train Native
Americans as missionaries. To that end, he opened Moor’s Indian Charity
School in 1754 (where he continued to train Anglo-American students who
paid their own way as well as students who functionally indentured
themselves to Wheelock as missionaries in exchange for an education).
Between 1754 and 1769, when he relocated to New Hampshire, Wheelock
trained approximately 60 male and female Native American students from
nearby Algonquian tribes and from the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) of
central New York. At the same time, he navigated the complicated
politics of missionary societies by setting up his own board of the
Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge, although he
continued to feud with the Boston Board of the SSPCK and the London
Commissioners in Boston (more colloquially called the New England
Company). By the late 1760s, Wheelock had become disillusioned with the
idea of Native American education. He was increasingly convinced that
educating Native Americans was futile (several of his students had
failed to conform to his confusing and contradictory standards), and, in
late 1768, he lost his connection to the Haudenosaunee. With his
inclination and ability to sponsor Native American missionaries largely
depleted, Wheelock sought instead to fulfill his ultimate ambition of
obtaining a charter and opening a college, which he did in 1769. To fund
this new enterprise, Wheelock drew on the £12,000 that Samson Occom had
raised for Moor’s Indian Charity School during a two-and-a-half year
tour of Great Britain (1765 to 1768). Much of this money went towards
clearing land and erecting buildings in New Hampshire for the Charity
School’s relocation — infrastructure that also happened to benefit
Dartmouth. Many of Wheelock’s contemporaries were outraged by what they
saw as misuse of the money, as it was clear that Dartmouth College was
not intended for Indians and that Moor’s had become a side project.
Although Wheelock tried to maintain at least some commitment to Native
American education by recruiting students from Canadian communities, the
move did a great deal of damage to his public image. The last decade of
Wheelock’s life was not easy. In addition to the problems of trying to
set up a college far away from any Anglo-American urban center, Wheelock
experienced the loss of relationships with two of his most famous and
successful students, Samson Occom and Samuel Kirkland (an Anglo-American
protégé). He also went into debt for Dartmouth College, especially after
the fund raised in Britain was exhausted.